William Drenttel

Winterhouse First Symposium on Design Education and Social Change: Program Description

Introduction

Winterhouse Institute, the organization founded by William Drenttel and Jessica Helfand, is hosting a symposium at the Winterhouse studio in northwest Connecticut October 17–19, 2010. This symposium will be an invitation-only gathering of fourteen educators to explore the teaching and practice of social design in undergraduate and graduate design education. The event is a part of a larger Winterhouse initiative around design and social innovation funded by the Rockefeller Foundation. Previous events have been held in Aspen, Colorado, and Bellagio, Italy.

This symposium will bring together leading educators at the intersection of design and social change from institutions throughout the United States as well as from abroad. The goal is to discuss strategies for teaching and practicing social design in the classroom and the field. This symposium also aims to foster collaborations among the participants and to build partnerships with the larger design community in effecting school-based solutions to social problems. The symposium proceedings will be published on Change Observer, the Design Observer channel devoted to design and social innovation.

Programming

Winterhouse Symposium on Design Education and Social Change will foster direct, detailed exchanges on four themes: • Case studies of effective design projects for social change based in academic institutions• Recommendations for transforming design school curricula to better accommodate such models• Exploring the roles and opportunities for new centers of design research and practice housed within academic institutions• Exploring the relationship between educators and outside partners and clients in facilitating social design projects

Winterhouse Institute acts as catalyst, coordinator and champion of an initiative in the public sphere to develop collective action and collaboration for social impact across the design industry; it also creates communication platforms for conferences and gatherings, including an editorial website to monitor and report on developments. Funding for this work is through the Rockefeller Foundation. William Drenttel directs the Winterhouse Institute and is editorial director of Design Observer.